Commentary by Michael Wade on Leadership, Ethics, Management, and Life

Thursday, June 12, 2008

When Every Problem is a Nail

Christina Hoff Sommers on the gender-equity hammer. An excerpt:The feminist reformers acknowledge that few science departments are guilty of overt discrimination. They claim, however, that subtle, invisible "unconscious bias" is discouraging talented aspiring women. Therefore, the major focus of the equity movement is to transform the academic culture itself--to make it more attractive to women by rendering science less stressful, less competitive and less time consuming. Debra Rolison, a senior research chemist at the Pentagon's Naval Research Laboratory and a leader of the equity campaign, describes the typical university chemistry department as "brutal to people who want to do something besides chemistry around-the-clock." MIT biologist and equity-activist Nancy Hopkins says that contemporary science "is a system where winning is everything, and women find it repulsive." Kathie Olsen, deputy director of the National Science Foundation, draws the revolutionary conclusion, "Our goal is to transform, institution by institution, the entire culture of science and engineering in America, and to be inclusive of all--for the good of all." To this end, the National Science Foundation has launched a multi-million dollar grant program, called ADVANCE, devoted to "institutional transformation" through gender-sensitivity workshops, interactive theater and the like. ADVANCE is well named: it is the advance guard, softening up the hard sciences for the coming of Title IX enforcement.